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Secondary Schools: Newark

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) on securing this extremely important debate. He has been and clearly continues to be a strong advocate for high-quality schools in his constituency. He has raised a number of important issues today for his constituents and I will seek to address the three major areas during the course of my speech. He has also helped to tempt me to Newark in future by mentioning the Gladstone link that I should have known about but was not aware of, and I would be delighted to visit the constituency. I will be in trouble with those who organise me if I make any commitments to particular dates, but I would like to visit at some stage.

I am grateful for the opportunity to address some of these important issues. It is clearly not right for pupils and teachers to work in buildings in such poor condition that learning is disrupted and staff time is diverted from the necessary focus on teaching. Even if those two things are not happening, having high-quality school buildings sends out an important signal to young people and to those who teach in schools about the importance that we place on education. It can also help to raise the aspirations of many young people, in particular those from more disadvantaged backgrounds, if they are educated in appropriate settings. The Government regard this area as extremely important.

The coalition Government, as my hon. Friend hinted in his opening comments, had no alternative on coming to power but to bring to an end the previous Government’s wasteful, delayed and ultimately unaffordable Building Schools for the Future programme which, remarkably, did not prioritise those schools in the worst condition. That was not the central criterion to allocate funding under the programme. The Priority School Building programme that we have introduced will replace those schools in the worst condition; it will replace the 261 schools

assessed to be the greatest priority on the basis of condition. In the majority of cases, those were not even in the previous Government’s Building Schools for the Future programme, which shows the stark gap between the previous plans and the priorities in many areas. In difficult economic times, we have to focus the limited resources that we have where they are most needed—on the repair and refurbishment of schools in the worst condition—and to tackle the urgent demand for new good school places as a result of the rising birth rate in large parts of the country.

Since May 2010, the Government have allocated £4 billion for the maintenance of the school estate to meet the needs of maintained schools and academies, and more than £5 billion to local authorities to support the provision of new school places. On 1 March, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced an additional £4 billion for the period from 2012-13 to the end of the Parliament. Over the Parliament as a whole, therefore, my hon. Friend can be pleased that the Government that we both support will have allocated some £18 billion for school capital investment, notwithstanding our difficult times.

We invited bids to the new Priority School Building programme from schools in need of urgent repair. We considered every application on a fair and objective basis, which involved officials visiting every school to validate the accuracy of building condition data. Two hundred and sixty-one schools throughout the country, therefore, will be rebuilt, or in some cases have their condition needs met substantively through the programme. As my hon. Friend is probably aware, 15 of those schools are in Nottinghamshire, including the Newark academy in his constituency. Nottinghamshire has more schools in the programme than any other local authority in England.

The Priority School Building programme is being delivered by grouping schools together into batches to ensure healthy competition for the work which will deliver value for money for the public purse. We expect to deliver the school works for considerable savings on the previous Building Schools for the Future programme. We will continue to investigate every option to accelerate the entire programme, but as far as possible the needs of the schools in the worst condition will be dealt with first. We are making good progress on the delivery of the programme. We have appointed contractors to build the first two groups of capital-funded schools, and construction work is expected to start in May. Contractors are currently tendering for the remaining six groups of capital-funded schools. Obviously, the first two groups consist of the schools that we consider to be the highest priority out of the 261 on the measures we used.

We are also working with the schools that we believe will form the first three privately financed groups. Work will start with further groups of schools later this year. We plan to release the first privately financed batch to the market in the spring, and further batches will be released as soon as possible thereafter. The programme is delivering a more efficient, faster and less bureaucratic approach to building schools. We have developed and are now using new baseline designs that are increasing efficiencies, and we have also reduced the regulations and guidance governing school premises.

The Education Funding Agency will commence engagement work with the Newark academy next year. The EFA will work with the school and other stakeholders to undertake a thorough study to determine the best way to address the condition needs, to manage the procurement process and to enter into the delivery contract.